Apologies for cross-posting. I invite You to consider this CFP for incoming RGS-IBG conference in Cardiff. Theme is orientated around geographical and critical software studies and together with my co-convenor Leighton Evans, we hope that some of You may find it interesting.
Software – the end product of code execution that is perceived, experienced and interacted with through applications and digital devices – is increasingly transforming spatialities of our everyday lives and perception of urban spaces (Evans 2011, 2015). We already understand many ways in which software and algorithms not only augment but also produce space, and how machine-made space (Mattern 2017) influences human spatialities. Geographical investigations of the relation between space/place and code are vivid and range from automatic production of space (Thrift and French, 2002), through software sorted geographies (Graham 2005) and hybrid spaces (Gordon and Silva 2011) to Kitchin and Dodge (2011) code/space and its recent extension into timescapes (Kitchin 2017). The emergence of Augmented Reality (AR) and re-emergence of Virtual Reality (VR) as a viable commercial technology represent new kinds of mediating software where digital objects can be overlaid over the perception of physical space or entirely digital spaces can be created which offer new possibilities for the manipulation, control and dictation of spatiality within those virtual worlds. Software algorithms are already responsible for the adjudication of important decisions in many domains, from the world of finance where they manage funds and sort customers, to cities where smart technologies and data-driven decisions form a new paradigm of urban governance. The trend in treating software as complicated assemblages of algorithmic imaginations and material practices that have political, social and necessarily spatial dimension (Mackenzie 2005, Montfort et al. 2012) calls for a need to be looking more closely into the processes responsible for the creation of software that is shaping the space we live in as they are far from neutral and objective (Gillespie 2014).
Given the prevailing position of considering software as a critical factor in the understanding of space and the attention paid to the political and social aspects of software, this session aims to explore the realm of possible theorizations of algorithmically augmented and produced spaces and places, specifically in the context of the advent of AR and VR technologies. We want to expand on the call for critical and empirical focus on algorithms (Kitchin 2017) by asking questions about their geographies, biases, origins and everyday uses as implemented through these newly emerging commercial technologies. We therefore welcome papers on the following topics:
- mechanisms and examples of algorithmic production of space,
- imaginations of space and place within the software developer community,
- spatial context of VR and AR technologies
- cultural and geographical biases in location-based software and services.
We also welcome papers that explore the overall theme of geographical software studies but go beyond the list above.
If You are interested in participating send title and abstract (200 words) together with author details to
[log in to unmask] or
[log in to unmask] by 9th February 2018.
